Hungry Bangalore: Order food online

For busy working professionals, finding a good restaurant at odd times is really challenging. Hungry Bangalore, a Bangalore based startup brings the restaurant information online to capture this niche market. Priyanka, Co-Founder of Hungry Bangalore shares more information about this service.

How did the idea of ‘bringing food business information’ online?

Both I and Ritesh are alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and after passing out in 2003 were working in the IT industry. We were working late nights and over the weekends and this was the time when office cafeterias were also closed. We had to order from outside and to look for information we always used internet. At that time, there was no such information available online and we ended up ordering from one of the restaurants close by for which we had the phone no. We found this was a problem with most of the people of our profile and did a small market research to validate our assumption before starting Hungrybangalore. We didn't want to be just an information portal and wanted to enable our users to place online orders, make informed decisions through user reviews etc.

It appears you started off with Bangalore and slowly expanded to other cities in form of Hungry Zone. How was your initial experience by launching it in the city?

We started in Bangalore with online orders from 10 restaurants. We expanded to 9 other cities for reviews, ratings and listings. The operations are still in Bangalore in terms of online orders and table reservations along with other value add features.

How are you able to attract and retain your customers?

Most of our customer base has come through word of mouth. We do promote the idea but our marketing is very focused. The convenience/service we offer combined with exclusive offers help us retain customers. What is your business model? How are you planning to monetize this service?

The service is free for the users and we charge a percentage of the order amount from the restaurants.

The local search market today is very fragmented with multiple companies flocking into this area from all interfaces (Web, Mobile and Voice search). How do you see this market evolving and what is your USP?

Hungryzone.com (HZ) is a one stop site for all food related needs. We have reviews, ratings and detailed information about restaurants in 10 Indian cities. In addition to this, in Bangalore users can book a table, order food for home delivery or take away after viewing the detailed menu, plan their parties, gift meals or even subscribe to a regular economical Tiffin service. The need for a common platform is spurred by the increasing traffic and queues at the restaurants. People are compelled to stay at home and order for home deliveries or make table reservations in advance. Users can place orders through website, via SMS, WAP or instant messenger.

HZ users will have the benefit of knowing the entire menu with prices, tax, minimum order for delivery, current offers, review/user ratings, location via a map, operational timings etc to choose and order his meal without any extra cost. He would not have to scout for menus and phone numbers of restaurants to place orders. User can also send us his party requirements and we let him know the choices best available to him. To restaurateur’s, this would not only mean an increase in business without increasing their infrastructure but also would help him get unbiased feedback about his service. We are also working with restaurants to power backend on their websites.

A little more about the services you are planning to launch?

We have a full suite of features in the service right now and we plan to first establish ourselves in Bangalore before moving on to other cities for operations. We plan to be in 3 other cities by this year end.